Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Community Tree Planting Recap - Ward 6

This past week has been a big one for tree planting in Ward 6. We planted trees at five sites: St. Colleta of Greater Washington, J.O. Wilson Elementary School, Two Rivers Public Charter School, Congressional Cemetery and Sherwood Recreation Center.

Students celebrating the J.O. Wilson tree planting.

At J.O Wilson Elementary School we had another successful school planting with 42 students planting trees (as well as 12 adults and seven Casey Trees staff). We planted 12 trees total including four cherries sponsored by the National Cherry Blossom Festival. The event was attended by At-Large Councilmember Sekou Biddle as well as representatives from the school, the Friends of J.O. Wilson Ground Committee, the National Cherry Blossom Festival, ING and NoMa BID.

This past Saturday was a big day with our two big volunteer plantings occurring simultaneously at Sherwood Recreation Center and Congressional Cemetery. We planted 16 trees at Sherwood and 28 trees at Congressional Cemetery (two allees of shagback hickories and black gums). The plans were complicated by the National Marathon operating in close proximity to the events. Our own Volunteer Coordinator Carol Herwig briefly had to join the marathon runners to pick up Starbucks coffee for the Congressional Cemetery event! Citizen Foresters finished planting at Sherwood quickly and made their way over to the event at the cemetery to enjoy barbeque and beer provided by the event organizers.

Volunteers at Sherwood Rec Center.

We had a lot of fantastic volunteer groups at both plantings. At Congressional Cemetery: 50 total volunteers, 12 Citizen Foresters, five Casey Trees staff, the local dog park members, Society of Collegiate Black Men (Howard University), Epsilon Sigma Alpha (George Washington University), Friends of Historic Congressional Cemetery. At Sherwood: 68 total volunteers, eight Citizen Foresters (including our board member Barbara Shea) and five staff. Thanks to everyone who braved the marathon traffic to plant with us. We were especially excited to return to Congressional Cemetery as we had planted there in spring 2006. The trees planted then had grown from small two inch caliper trees to shade-producing eight inch caliper trees that are healthy and starting to bud this week.